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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 

AND OTHER POEMS 



THE PURSUIT 
O F HAP P I N E S S 

AND OTHER POEMS 

BY 

BENJAMIN R. C. LOW 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE HOUSE THAT WAS AND OTHER POEMS" 

"THE SAILOR WHO HAS SAILED AND OTHER POEMS" 

AND 

"A WAND AND STRINGS AND OTHER POEMS" 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON! JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 



MCMXIX 



&p 






Copyright, 1918, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 

Copyright, 1919, 
By JOHN LANE COMPANY 



Press of 
J. J. Little & Ives Co. 
New York, U. S. A. 



©CLA515640 



11 \W 






TO 

MY LITERARY FATHER CONFESSOR 

AND 

GENIAL FRIEND 

THOMAS WALSH 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Pursuit or Happiness n 

Jack 0' Dreams 67 

Underground 72 

A Young Girl Laughs 76 

A Young Girl Sings 78 

Certainly in That Music 82 

March Eighteenth 83 

To the Very Tender Crescent Moon 84 

The Sociability of the Subconscious 85 

A Fire of Leaves 89 

Once 91 

It Might Have Happened So 93 

Moods 95 

On the Death op an Obscure Musician .... 97 

The Garden op Opportunity 100 

February 103 

October 105 

Grace Court, Brooklyn Heights 107 

Romanticism in 

Requiescat, April 23RD, 1916 113 

These United States 115 

The Soldier to His Countrymen 122 

A Pine Box — and the Flag ........ 128 

The Housing of the Banners 130 

7 



THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 
AND OTHER POEMS 



THE 
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS 



There is a beauty, after all is said, 
Unreached forever. Not when music dies, 
And earth dissolves in rapture of deep 

sighs ; 
Not by the dance, down glades of moon- 
light fled; 
Nor poetry, echoing death-chants to the 

dead, 
Is it unveiled : and yet, so near it lies, 
The lonely wanderer feels its faunlike 

eyes, 
And almost has it — by a turn of head. 
A rainbow spirit, tokened with unrest, 
It brushes wings, indues its deity, 
For half a glimpsing-time ; and then — is 

flown, 
A vanishing of rose leaves through the 

West, 
A shining prevalence wasting on a blown, 
Blue distance of pale, impermanent sea. 
ii 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



II 

Who, in tail ships, intrepid, from the land 
Into the sunrise haste the stars away, 
Buoyant, beyond the sallow sweet of hay, 
Warm, still, with afternoon; beyond the 

bland, 
Broad peaceful haven where are white 

sails fanned 
Soft, through the twilight; out upon the 

grey, 
Adventurous blind deep; they, truly, they 
The wonders of the Most High under- 
stand. 
Yet, as in yore was homesick Charlemagne, 
Upon the brink of his own fairest France, 
Haunted by echoes which the Pyrenees 
Spoke him, of Roland's horn far back in 

Spain, — 
Ever and ever, over all the seas, 
Float the faint bugles of love's variance. 



12 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



III 

Like the soft changes in a woman's eyes 
Beside the fire, who, dreamingly with- 
drawn 
Down distant by-ways where her youth has 

gone, 
Now, chin in hand, makes happy enter- 
prise 
Of memory; or like first spring that hies, 
With shadows of sweet April, up the lawn; 
So is the sea, immediate with dawn, — 
With one plumed planet scanning the proud 

skies. 
Into the deep subsides the living dark, 
And over it, just breathing, breaks the 

rose; 
Then a white wave-top, washing the far 

rim, 
Wakes, and the sea is lonely for one 

bark ; — 
Lonely as beauty, lonely as love to him 
Who, fain to follow, knows not where it 
goes. 



13 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



IV 

To meet sea mornings, leaning from the 

bow, 
Idly, I've wantoned many an airy hour 
With pretty iris wreaths of sun and shower, 
Where sheared through briny acres the 

sharp prow; 
And in mid-ocean, following that plough, 
Watched the slow curling of its built-up 

power 
Ripen a blue past April's; loose a flower 
Rarer than earth-born ever budded bough. 
Even as sorrow, holden from the light 
A long, long while, in sudden, swift sur- 
prise 
Looks forth, relinquishing, when joy 

comes true, 
And is, just then, most beautiful; so, 

might 
Each prisoned deep be sorrow, that breaks 

through ; 
Breathes; out-heavens heaven; sings; 

laughs — and dies. 



14 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



When the blue sea is bitten with sharp 

wind, 
And gathers panic even as it goes, 
Right to the southward, bellowing its woes 
To the bare sky, I wonder if some mind 
There be not, far to land but intertwined 
With it, that crying, southward also flows, 
And in the swaying of a garden rose 
Leans beyond years to a lost love behind. 
And when the sea-light gradually dies 
From wave to wave, a grieving wanderer, 
It is, then, unto me, as if there came 
The quiet aching in a young lad's eyes — 
Expectant eyes, all glowing with young 

flame — 
Who sees his first love fade, and does not 

stir. 



15 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



VI 

A blink of sunlight on the cabin floor; 
A scouring-out of port-holes with wet sea ; 
Laughter on deck ; a song along the lee ; — 
The ships, the old, old ships, are young 

once more : 
Younger than Nineveh, younger than the 

shore 
Of blue-beguiled Iberia, or free, 
Imperial Knossos, skilled in victory; — 
Younger than these, yet olden long before. 
Butting the head-seas, joyous, once again, 
They clew close down and let their scup- 
pers run 
With gusty music-chucklings, and bright 

foam. 
After them ! — follow them ! — galleon 

fleets of Spain, 
Beaks from the North, and triremes of 

great Rome ! — 
Reached not the Happy Islands? — none? 

Not one. 



16 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



VII 

Like music stilled, that very far away, 
Goes treading, in the foot-prints of a tune ; 
Or like pale twilight, sad for afternoon 
Lost, it was comrades with but could not 

stay; 
There is a singing waked, a gleam of day 
Divine and dying, when the romantic moon 
Walks with the lonely sea; a radiance 

strewn 
Of some great passing, none can mourn 

as they. 
Love is remembrance, an aroma rare 
Of some dear, doorway guest, who, hard- 
ly known, 
Smiled, and went on (we will not say, 

who died) ; 
Leaving her semblance on a turning stair, 
Forever after, tender — amid stone. 
Sea; moon; a third? Nay! — there is none 
beside. 



17 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



VIII 

When love has lost, it does not trouble 

long 
With the reproachful deep, but looses rein 
To leeward of the first free wind; astrain 
For shallows and the oblivion of strong, 
Indignant reefs, obstreperous in song. 
It will not bear the brooding night 

again, — 
The starlit tides that tore its heart in 

twain ; 
But breaks upon the beach its time-old 

wrong. 
Love that has lost will build itself a fire 
On cliffs of unrived rock; will sleep on 

stone, 
And scoop the flint for water from the sky : 
Betrayed, it spurns the sea, forswears de- 
sire, 
And rid of dreams will henceforth live and 

die. 
A flower-root fills a crack; and peace is 

flown. 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



IX 

A flower to tell the wind with, lightly; yet 
So prinked in purple, printed so with blue 
Of the real sky (love's token to bestrew 
With sky) as might, from a proud para- 
pet, 
Lord it on leagues of roses; newly met, 
Out of white dreams of unenduring dew 
Awakened — proof enough; the world is 

new — 
Open my heart, now; take this violet? 
But, pain of passing, pictured in its face 
The very heaven it holds is still too high, 
A hand's breadth, to be climbed to; still 

too far 
For more than wanting of; this flower, this 

place 
Eternal, by one touch of beauty, are, 
And will not fade : it is I that must die. 



19 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



X 

When on warm fields the bloom goes wan- 
dering, 

And little woodland paths let in the May; 

When throats of song have lips of apple- 
spray, 

And down long twilights drift the stars of 
spring; — 

Perverse I am! — it were a happy thing 

To brush one petal cheek, and end there : 
they, 

Blithe birds and flowers, are free; I go 
alway, 

Cinctured with shadows of remembering. 

Love should not wear so beautiful a smile, 

When life can look beyond it in a year: 

Lilacs, returning, speak the gentleness 

The last ones gave, forgotten for a while. 

The lovely last ones ! — they too lived, no 
less ; 

Now are no more ; then joy is not just here. 



20 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XI 

By token of red leaves that wrinkle brown, 
And harvest stooks in phalanx of rich 

gold; 
By lakes dark-ruffled with marauding cold 
(That slept, and now the lily-pads turn 

down) ; 
By its own just, infallible renown, 
When Autumn signals, being very bold, 
I answer: "Hasten, monarch, and take 

hold! 
Wreathe white with frost: wear the great 

sunset crown!" 
Then, seeing Summer's pained, reproach- 
ful eyes 
Turned backward down the distance of a 

glade, 
Her hands unclasping flowers and letting 

fall, 
Her pace dejected as of one who tries 
No longer to win happiness at all, 
Joy is struck dead, for knowing her be- 
trayed. 



21 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XII 

Like as an arrow, loosed against the night, 
Impales Capella of the Charioteer, 
Or lunges into Perseus like a spear, 
Proud and predominant in upward flight, 
Then, ere a single star has bloomed more 

bright, 
Feels courage dwindle, die, and disappear ; 
So love leaps up, and so, in heaven's tier, 
Tainted with earth, slips backward from 

delight. 
There is a waywardness belying bliss, 
A warp against the current of all joy; 
A knock, inimical, upon the door, 
Forbidding rapture; a dark precipice 
That, cross who may, will not let laughter 

o'er; — 
A canker seeking rose-buds to destroy. 



22 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XIII 

Spirits there are, intuitively great, 

Who will not own the serfdom of desire, 

But when the cinders of their first-blown 

fire 
Cease to be stars, and rain down desolate, 
Rise up, go forth, and eye to eye with fate, 
Of common, coarse-cut stone and tight- 
strung wire 
Make statues that are god-heads, and a 

lyre 
Whose lifted song long years reverberate. 
They hate the little limits that hedge in 
Joy, and the narrowness of each new day; 
Despise old gifts, and out of raw defeat 
Rear their own heaven's roof for dreams 

to win; 
Making obeisance at a Mercy Seat 
Never more earth's. Then they too pass 
away. 



23 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XIV 

As on cold window-glaze the sunset burns, 
Beyond a strait where grey-plumed sea- 
birds cry, 
So, in carved sepulchres, the great dead lie 
Illuminate, long after funeral urns 
Have spilled their dust on centuries; re- 
turns 
Forever, so, a glory down the sky, — 
A lyric gladness each brave soul spread 

high, 
One stave above the stature thought dis- 
cerns. 
Almost it is as if another air 
Were round these relics, full of cloudy 

gold 
And twilight tints, a different place and 

time, — 
Sequestered, like a quiet sea-cove, where 
Waves become dreams, and booming 

rocks, the chime 
Of distant church-bells indolently tolled. 



24 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XV 

Not differently to-day iEgean blue 

Edges long-silent Hellas with sweet sound; 

The night wind wanders inland and is 
drowned 

In just such groves as faned Apollo knew. 

Where went that art which anciently could 
hew 

Stones into beauty lifted from this ground 

Such length of dreams ? Something is lost 
they found, 

A moon-beam's breadth beyond men's 
grasp that grew. 

They found : the hungry, out-of-heart, who 
spent 

One shoulder's heave at heaven, and 
passed on, — 

Up the dim thrust their yearning columns 
gave, 

Athwart the calm of pure-browed pedi- 
ment 

And straight-lipped truth of stringent arch- 
itrave, — 

Unto their goal; leaving — the Parthenon. 



25 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XVI 

Death is the deathless flower when loved 

ones die; 
Containing them in sweetness out of 

time ; — 
The lotus-lily breathed up by this slime, 
In whose deep cup our tears of longing lie 
And mirror on remembrance, as the sky 
Is caught in fountains tinkling in clear 

chime — 
Each drop a ripple and each tear a 

rhyme- 
Blurred and becalmed but never quite put 

by. 
Yet even here is beauty that still fades, 
As, leaf by leaf, the fresh-cut coronal 
Fades, and the light fades, and stars, and 

April snows. 
Oh, bubble dome and dreaming colon- 
nades ; 
Young Shah Jehan, young love and death- 
less rose; 
Ganges and bodies and white Taj Mahal ! 



26 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XVII 

Pilate said: "What is truth?" Death an- 
swered him ; 

And Druid blocks and dolmens of strange 
stone, 

Once wet with blood, were dry and lichen- 
grown, 

Because death answered him. Then, in 
the dim 

North twilight, brooding bent-browed by 
the brim 

Of long-aisled forests, lifted-up, alone, 

Men dreamed, and lo, the Gothic, and the 
blown, 

Exhilarant wings, roofing, of cherubim. 

Beneath the minster towers what hymns 
have rolled; 

How rich in prayers alluvial it stands, 

The kindle on it still of dragon fire, — 

Of crescent flames and Christ-crossed 
shields of gold! 

Beauty unhelmed her here, as knight to 
sire, 

Once. Saith the spirit: "Temples not 
made with hands." 
27 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XVIII 

Now proudly to the sea-front once again 
Love presses, leaving heedlessly behind 
Her house, her garden, all her kith and 

kind, 
For trouble that her heart has, for pure 

pain 
Deep down within her, when the hot, gold 

grain 
Gathers cool shadows from the billowy 

wind ; — 
Athirst she is, and stumbles headlong, 

blind, 
To thrust her forehead seaward in dis- 
dain. 
And there, upon the brink, she bides at 

last, 
Her dreams but at beginnings, her whole 

sea 
Only the singing borderland of sound. 
How, nearly flown, earth-tied through 

ages past, 
Beauty still baffles her, yet breathes her 

round ; — 
Headless, sans arms, defeated Victory! 
28 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XIX 

When Da Vinci painted his Gioconda, so, 
He verged by stealth on Beauty's holiness, 
And would have had her naked truth, un- 
less, 
Just as he came she had not chanced to go ; 
Leaving him staggered, all his heart aglow 
With one, arch, backward look, one veiled 

caress, 
And one pale instant of the prophetess, — 
Blended and blinded in one smiling No. 
He wrote that smile along his lady's lips, 
Indelible, unfading; — flowerlike, rare 
And momentary mouth ! Winds have gone 

by, 
Bearing baled merchandise on old-world 

ships 
Into a listening, luminous, lost sky. 
Lady, dead lady, art thou also there? 



29 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XX 

Artist and canvas, fancier of dreams 
Disintegrate in moonlight, reader mild 
Of countenances, wonder-drinking child 
Poring upon wind whimsies, and the 

gleams 
Of leafy sunlight fallen down dark 

streams ; — 
In all his ways how elfish and wood-wild, 
How deep in contemplation, but beguiled 
By each least glint how liberally, he seems. 
For hurt of beauty ebbing at the brim, 
Even as lips approach it, he makes prayer 
Of painting, offers his uplifted eyes 
For just one chink of heaven to hold for 

him; 
And, haply, has it, ours forever, there. 
He fails, though, for all that. Beauty still 

dies. 



30 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXI 

In texture of deep tides that thwart and 
bind, 

Dumb and imprisoned under weighty woe, 

Until an ocean heaves, and great waves go, 

Heart-sobbing, into exile; then, all shined 

With muted moonlight, reaching into 
blind, 

Long-quiet coves, on wet sands weeping 
low; — 

Plead, violins; impassioned trumpets, 
blow ! — 

Music her mantle dons; earth fades be- 
hind: 

And Love, in dreams, besieges empty halls 

For that desired and dear one, gone be- 
fore, 

Whose old-rose fragrance lingers, like a 
sky 

Misleading stars. How hauntingly she 
calls 

Into the darkness where faint footsteps 
die! 

Poor fool; in vain. They pass that way 
no more. 

3i 



The Pursuit of Happiness 

XXII 

Clad in a song, with loops of early flowers 
Lavished about her shoulders, Poetry, 

maid 
Of bird-like mimicry and escapade, 
Tilts her top notes on wafts of petal 

showers, 
Or, msenad in the moonlight, overpowers, 
With frolic mirth, a melancholy glade : 
A little weary, then, prone in the shade, 
Saddens a tune with crowns and crumbled 

towers. 
But see her in her age, her bloom all spent, 
Her wreaths of April withered and awry, 
Sitting with hands meek-folded, eyes afar, 
In tragedy of truth made evident; — 
Speaking plain words in quiet, till a star 
Completes her contemplations with a sigh. 



32 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXIII 

Words are to dreams a wired and golden 

cage 
Wherein, made captive, some enchanting 

bird 
Is listened to for music that is heard 
In wooded freedom only; or a page 
Of butterflies, wing-spread for pilgrimage, 
But never, never flying, nor bestirred 
By happy preference : each printed word 
A theft from youth, all overgrown with 

age. 
Remembrance of a momentary bliss, 
The flash of wings when Beauty crossed 

the blue ; — 
To speak — can arms encircle empty air 
And so enact the quiver of a kiss? 
Always that pain and always that despair: 
Yet there are hearts with singing all shot 

through. 



33 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXIV 

One maiden knee emerging, one bared 

limb, 
Modelled Diana's own, nerved and astrain, 
A path of moonlight — Dancing breaks in 

twain 
The thousand ages gone. About the rim 
Are all earth's unspoiled children, dim 
And dear: she leads them forth again; 
Weaving round youth a joyous old re- 
frain, — 
An antic rhapsody of flute and hymn. 
So leaped they in the forests, long ago, 
And so grew languid, feeling love draw 

nigh. 
Oh, bounding blood, and shiver of young 

flame ! — 
By touch of lips eternity to know; 
To clasp immortal wedlock without 

shame ! 
The moment passes. We too? Yes, we 

die. 



34 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXV 

A summer beach, warm drowsing; clean, 

wet sand 
With filling footprints ; boys and girls and 

sea. 
Here, hose and shoon discarded, rap- 

turedly 
They run the gauntlet; here, linked hand 

in hand, 
Adventure off their native bridge of 

land — 
Foam-deep to instep, ankle and then 

knee — 
To scurry home again in panic glee, 
With clothes caught high, and limbs all 

shining tanned. 
Beauty wafts inland, Love to seaward 

blows, 
And meeting, part, and parting, meet no 

more. 
One golden moment blended, they are 

still ; 
In children, in the bud-break of a rose. 
The petals bloom, the childish zest burns 

chill: 
The wind is desolate upon the shore. 
35 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXVI 

Is man a wave whose reach is not yet run? 
Will dreams surge higher after he has 

died? 
Take yonder youth poised at the trestle- 
side, 
Sans clothes, damp-haired, a poem of sea 

and sun ; — 
Replaces his smooth breed a shaggier one? 
Will eagles' wings be some day deified? 
It may be. But more beautiful in pride 
Than this bright body is there shall be 

none. 
A heap of dust which any windy day 
Might hoard in one right-angle of brick 

wall ; — 
Ruins of time have crumbled out for this, 
And groping aeons ached their hearts 

away. 
Imperishable plan; frail edifice! — 
The tides turn seaward and the dead leaves 

fall. 



36 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXVII 

Museum maunderings! A shelf of 

bones; — 
Old yellow skulls with matted hair and 

stain 
Of time's erosion; death's-heads with 

migraine, 
Set out to cool, so many fresh-cooked 

scones. 
What of them? Measurements; cephalic 

zones; 
The long and short of them? Nay! — but 

again 
To kindle here a burning human brain, — 
A flickering spirit — on these altar stones. 
Somewhat was here, snuffed out; some 

smouldering fire ; 
Some incense not just earthly, so it seems. 
No mollusc this, a flaccid fill of shell, — 
But crowded to its roof-trees with de- 
sire. . . . 
Once through these windy corridors there 

fell 
The backward laughter of departing 

dreams. 

37 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXVIII 

Like as the straight blue sea curves round 

at last, 
And like as stars in open midnight lie 
Storied from bud to drooping, all gone-by 
Years but as naught, on that great curtain 

cast; 
So here, upon a shelf, time's toil spun fast, 
The drift shows ; skull to skull is progress ; 

cry 
Victories over victories, then die 
To nearer beauty, up the trudged-out past. 
There is a current speaks in human veins, 
Deeper than the proud pulse admits; a 

flow 
Unswerving; a repeated, farewell word, 
With ground-bass of great surges, life re- 
tains 
Dim memory of, from some far sea-coast 

heard, -v 

Adventure's morning, voiceless moons ago. 



38 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXIX 

Unyielding ruins stretched in acrid smoke, 
Behold how Rheims, her beauty all laid 

bare, 
The lovelier for defacement, still more 

fair, — 
More heaven at heart for each new devil 

stroke, 
Outbraves her garments. What a tongue 

they spoke, 
Who, long since dead, could character, 

four-square, 
The great escutcheon of good courage 

there ; 
Firmer than granite, stalwart more than 

oak! 
And this rank skull, eyes empty, mouth 

agape, 
Mortality's residuary, found, 
Spilt-on by death, in some contemptuous 

ditch, 
More nobly than in life outdreams the ape 
By heights prefigured of; not reaching 

which, 
It sowed with faith the undisheartened 

ground. 

39 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXX 

There is a house, wide-elbowed, nudging 

trees, 
A hilltop under it, the friendly stain 
Grown over it, of wind and sun and rain; 
Whose door, swung open, gives on rev- 
eries. 
A garden sways behind it, of whose bees 
Are 'cello thrums; and indoors, the re- 
frain 
Of blundering flies upon a window-pane: 
But silence hangs the walls like draperies. 
Weathered without, drawn ghostly sweet 

within, 
Still, faint it vibrates an old music, still, 
An antique beauty lifted over years, 
Like waves in moonlight welling very thin 
At tide-turn: softly, to attentive ears, 
Frays out once more its long-gone good 
and ill. 



40 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXI 

Houses have hauntings, on warm after- 
noons 

Drowsy with sweet siesta, at the door 

No kindled voice, no footstep on the floor; 

Enmeshed in golden peace, the hushed 
heart swoons. . . . 

But draw the bow, once, gently — how the 
tunes, 

Imprisoned in the wood deep days before, 

Coax beauty out of quietude once more, 

With love and laughter, twilight and soft 
moons. 

Those wave-tops in the sunlight men call 
"souls," 

Whence comes it that they pattern on the 
mind 

This music? How print they here, un- 
worn, 

Their star-dipped path, on whom an ocean 
rolls ? 

Faint as dark echoes from wild crags for- 
lorn ; 

Poor drift of dreams trailing so far be- 
hind! 

4i 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXII 

It may be Beauty walks in widening rings 
Forever, Love's first colloquy the stone; 
Truth is, perchance, the ebb-tide of the un- 
known, 
Laying old beaches bare of long-dead 

things ; 
But life roots deep, and twenty thousand 

springs 
Suffice not for one garden fully grown: 
Dry drift of leaves; the birds' oak over- 
thrown ; — 
Next year the warbler in a new tree sings. 
Earth holds to life, impenitent of time 
Admitted — she a child then — once for all; 
Dreaming past failure, up the precipice 
Where, niche by niche, her seedlings lodge 

and climb; 
Her splendid strivings strewing the abyss, 
Exultant in the few that did not fall. 



42 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXIII 

Youth first is April, mischievous, then 

May, 
From wink of dawn to waned-out after- 
noon 
Seated astride the earth, a singing tune 
All twinkled full of starlight, a flushed 

spray 
Of precious peach-bloom opened in a day. 
Come wind and rain, till all the walks are 

strewn 
With woful wreckage. Then, ah, then is 

June; — 
And life, unlatticed, runs once more away. 
Despoiler of sweet petals, yet is pain 
A foot-sure pilot leading by the hand 
Love. Let the winds blow ! Ever beauty 

burns 
To richer regions than youth's bubbling 

vein! 
Say it — still change is loss; the chilled 

heart turns, 
Still, from the sea, to one last glow of 

land. 



43 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXIV 

Beauty has other thoughts than place or 

time; 
It is too winged for these clogged thor- 
oughfares, — 
Fades out too fleetingly for the slow airs 
Which wakeful autumn stirs with, when 

the rime 
Whitens the cheek of russet pantomime : 
(Gone; come and gone; the midmost of 

pied players, 
Its part gapes empty, almost unawares, 
While the great actor's cloak is praised 

sublime. ) 
This earth is captive to the spacious dark, 
Gyved to the gusty pathways on which 

turn 
A myriad orbs evolving into night. 
On other ends that beauty must embark 
Which slantwise cuts the road in wavering 

flight, 
A butterfly — bent whither? Who shall 

learn? 



44 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXV 

Like singing in the sea-light, off the wane 
Of afternoon (when, weathered mainsails 

wide, 
The fishing fleet heads home, and overside 
Are chanties of the wet, entangled seine 
And shining catch in scuppers) is the pain 
Of Beauty's passage, wistfully de- 
scried ;- — 
The music of a dream-entinctured tide 
On shadowy ships, and a far-held refrain. 
Remembrance if there be of Beauty's 

face, — 
A groping-back for blind, lost lineaments 
The heart aches over, half regathering, 
It trembles from no earthly hiding-place; 
Some deep oblivion yields it, ring on ring, 
Haunting horizons. . . . Whence? I 
know not whence. 



45 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXVI 

Love keeps the day — broken to stars — all 
night. 

There is such patience in it as prevails 

Beyond cool hours of sleep and sable sails 

To brimming basins of fresh morning 
light, 

And wearies-out the drip of death's de- 
spite 

Down world-old eaves. Love leans the 
scales 

That little from the level which yet quails 

The brow of Fate, the bronze and mala- 
chite. 

Love waits, great dreamer, and with face 
in hands 

Hears the faint moan of winds around the 
world, 

The lap of waves, the pebbles brooks wash 
bare, 

Heedful how slowly loose the swaddling 
bands 

From that hid future hovering in air; — 

Lily and leaf in one brown earth-bulb 
furled. 

46 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXVII 

Happy is cock-crow, heard at break of 

sleep 
In summer, lifting lids to the lulled room 
And little stir of curtains. What perfume 
Of flowers refreshed! — What drowsiness 

to keep ! 
(The reflex, floating seaward on the deep, 
Flutters the sails and swings the languid 

boom ; — 
So memory lives.) What gladness out of 

gloom 
To hear that clarion climb the starry steep ! 
There is no deep loss westward of the sun; 
The pained farewells of pensive afternoon 
Are not, at dawn: with childlike welcom- 
ing, 
Looked for unanxiously, the dower is done 
Of a whole world clipped in a golden ring. 
Not even beauty fades, yet; but will soon. 



47 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXVIII 

Many a morning, leaf-like, has been 

strewn, 
Reluctantly, tiding a pleasant place; 
Many a night has ravelled into lace, 
Touched by the haunted fingers of the 

moon; 
Another spring goes brook-down into June, 
And then will summer, then will autumn 

trace 
Their sweet, familiar by-paths: but her 

face 
Beauty holds hidden in one afternoon. 
(Life is so rare of level unisons, 
And love remembers in its dreams.) Not 

eyes 
It is, nor words, nor tremblings of the 

hand: 
Only — a far light dims, a long wave runs, 
And in the silence, after, through that 

land — 
Wings overhead, and little-bird replies. 



48 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XXXIX 

A swimmer in the sunrise, one wave's 

break 
I grope beneath bewilderment. The surge 
Wears thin : soon, soon, I shall emerge ; — 
The blurring drops from my blear eye- 
lids shake; 
Rise to the next wave ; laugh, and be awake 
To that immediate colour of the verge, 
And golden call, whose dark, subaqueous 

urge 
Troubles me, now, so deeply, for love's 

sake. 
There is so much to seek! — so near behind 
This film the truth is ! Through this deep- 
sea trance 
Beauty falls flickering, bewitched, unsure; 
Life catches it, a sidling shell, pale, nacre- 
lined; 
While on the dim sand-floor lies dreaming 

— pure 
Love? Nay! — but broken light — love's 
variance. 



49 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XL 

When this blind now shall be the golden 
past, 

And blend with the warm haze on mellow- 
ing hills, — 

When reverie, looking into bygones, fills 

All the rude scars with gentler overcast, 

I wonder, in that landscape, fading fast, 

What tree, unnoted now, what common 
spills 

Of meadow bloom, what mere red-robin 
trills, 

Will be where Beauty hid — and hallowed, 
last? 

Eyes that are sad once mingled for her 
sake 

With tangled briars undertwined with 
fern, 

Or followed over fences her dusk hair 

Of dreams, and lost her. Swallow to a 
lake 

Will Beauty, skimming, mirror down? and 
where ? 

Compelled by what bleak memory to re- 
turn? 

50 



The Pursuit of Happiness 

XLI 

How strange it is ! — how throbs that night 
again; — 

Thick coppice, fevered brook, hot, haunted 
air, 

A soul at challenge, God's dark every- 
where. 

Why is it happier with that dried pain 

Than summer-longs of pleasure? Why re- 
main, 

Like flowers, the snowflakes of one morn- 
ing's care — 

Each step a sorrow — glowing now more 
fair 

Than all October's glories of ripe stain? 

As one who, blinded, from the wars re- 
turns ; • 

Pursues old paths with cane-prods; clicks 
the gate, 

And, entering, goes groping through his 
hall, 

Heedless of portraits, prints and Chinese 
urns, 

To one hard chair — his boyhood's worst 
of all; 

So time, turned backward, chooses. Pain? 
— now? Wait I 

5i 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLII 

If it be true that flowers are very fair 
For sweet allure and tinctured marriage fee 
Of moon-white moth or brown, benignant 

bee 
With pollen on his back, and have no 

care — 
Despite a fragrance filling all the air — 
For such vain shapes of shadowland as 

we, 
Then in themselves they outreach artistry, 
And loved by one, are lovely everywhere. 
And we, warm human hearts, it may be, 

grow 
Beyond a beauty visiting on eyes 
For some desired endearing, to a power 
A thought more perfect than our pulses 

know : 
It may be in some slowly-opened hour, 
Bleeding at heart, we perfume Paradise. 



52 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLIII 

Music there is, deeper than melody 
Of meadow brooks or dusk-blown serenade 
A creaking wagon comes on at up-grade 
Against the sunset, from shy woods won 

free 
By hidden hermit-thrushes ; songs there be 
Whose based accompaniment no strings 

have played, 
Whose compass balks the seamost barri- 
cade, 
Where all the land is sung by all the sea : 
Beauty there is, beyond the glamorous 

foam 
Of apple-buds new breaking, or the stir 
A sudden star brings, rifting after rain, 
All ringed with drops from leaves, the 

quiet home 
Of water-lilies (Far it is and fain, 
And sad for beauty's sake), called Char- 
acter. 



53 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLIV 

He was too beautiful for them to know. 

The face caught grief, the garments be- 
came mean; 

Brown market dust and he trudged dawns 
between 

And uttered drouth at nightfall; to and 
fro, 

An uproar after him — he wrought out so. 

Youth went away, down distant pastures 
green; 

Joy died; friends perished; death must in- 
tervene. 

He was too beautiful : they did not know. 

Music twines wreaths for heart-aches that 
are dead; 

From marble limbs immortal longings fall ; 

Still lifts Medea's outcry to her loss; 

The Parthenon is still unravished. 

That life-blood soaking into that rough 
cross 

Outlives, and is the loveliest of all! 



54 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLV 

Who left his hilltop in a glow of sky 
For the dim road, forgiving fate its frown, 
Enhungered after disesteemed renown, 
That artless poor man with the laughing 

eye, 
Who preached his brother birds, and 

charmed so high, 
He drew the proud marks of redemption 

down ; — 
The golden belfries of that sunset town 
Are beautiful because his life passed by: 
Because he, gayheart, dreamed in morning 

dew, 
And said his prayers to flower-buds, or 

told 
Sweet drowsy beads on stars looped over- 
head; 
Loving, the whole while; loving ... as 

have few. 
Assisi ages; sunsets fade their gold; — 
The world will never own Saint Francis 

dead. 



55 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLVI 

Because he loved the truth he died unspent, 

Whose blade caught sky with every logic 
stroke, — 

Whose laughter kindled tears, whose brave 
arch broke 

The cracked, false roof-beam of a conti- 
nent : 

Wherever Lincoln looked a new earth 
went, 

Hewn clean with kindness, built of com- 
mon folk 

Persuaded to be loving — so he spoke, 

And so himself lived, simply, what he 
meant. 

Here, forest clearings filled, there, rail- 
roads flung, 

Still, thewed with dreams of her dear 
deathless dead, 

She travails, she who was his proud desire, 

Keeping his beauty with a guarded tongue. 

Cold, do they say she is; unvoiced of fire; 

No singer? She gave time a man instead. 



56 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLVII 

I know not if a better bloom there be 
Than this rough earth gives, being trodden 

down 
By wager of young feet in death's renown, 
On shining fields of breathless bravery: 
Unless it were some tight-lipped loyalty 
Drudging its days out in a home-spun 

gown; 
Tasting each drop of life's most bitter 

brown, 
And humming all the while, heart-break- 

ingly. 
There is an answer, sworn to with the eyes, 
For every hint of Beauty's querying. 
Required, young loss? — a life is flung 

away; 
Sorrow? — a heart is forfeit and hope dies 
By inches ; faith ? — how beautiful are they 
That round a wounded cause come rally- 
ing! 



57 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLVIII 

One star is lit, and a whole sea is burned : 

There are no depths too deep for that 
small shine 

To shadow into ; no such anodyne 

Of darkness, patiently interned, 

As drowns the hurt of loveliness discerned 

And just not taken. Lips with lips com- 
bine; 

Hearts echo hearts — the lost is the di- 
vine — 

(How know they beauty, never having 
learned?) 

Vainly. Yet, wistful hands, not all in vain ! 

Outreached in starlight, something have 
you; flung 

To flowering sunset fields, no less a fire 

Ruddies within you ; searched with narrow 
pain, 

Not knowingly new altars you have hung: 

Beauty is born of Beauty's own desire. 



58 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



XLIX 

Eternity walks with us, stride for stride, 
Once in so rarely, bending down to see 
Our broken gaze of fuddled infancy 
Drowned in a buttercup, or walling wide 
Upon two daisies: suddenly espied, 
Goes out in wonderment and faery 
We catch the wild of, knowing it to be 
Something remembered, half, and loved 

beside. 
By this we learn our lineage ; by this 
Made proud, old doubts repudiate, 
And henceforth move upon hereafters, 

given, 
Like dreamers in their dreams, an artifice 
Of slow awakening, that not yet shriven, 
Has hold of life, and mocks dissolving 

fate. 



59 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



Not in the pith and marrow of men's 

bones ; 
Not in the blood, nor pencilled on the 

brain; 
A voice, yet not well heard; a dream, not 

plain; 
A music, intermingled with deaf tones; — 
There is an urge that enters in and owns 
Beyond the power of putting off again. 
A calling in the night, a stir of pain, 
Unrest and exile up wild mountain lones : 
There is a fealty affirmed so far, 
The adverse cunnings of a wintry sky 
Adread it not; it is too stout for fate, 
And is undaunted of men's eyes. They are 
Brief, life; frail, flesh; not good are we, 

nor great;— 
Show us where Beauty went, for she 

passed by! 



60 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



LI 

Hereafter. ... Is it death to fall awake 
Upon a darkness blown like sleeves be- 
hind? 
Death, to knot loose this mummer's 

masque of mind, 
And lave in naked truth as in a lake? 
Childlike, submissive, sweet it were to take 
The bedtime candle drowsily, and, blind, 
Stumble up stairs, hugging a toy, to find 
Love and Hereafter soft-eyed for one's 

sake. 
There is a valley here; a rearguard goes 
Through crimson cleft of crags in deepen- 
ing shade. 
Here there is tryst of battle brunt to bear, 
While, peak to peak, a sobbing bugle 

blows 
Beauty's betrayal. (Hewn and hacked-ofif 

blade, 
They shall not pass!) Roland is riding 
there. 



61 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



LII 

Spring almost seems more beautiful than 
Spring, 

This year. The swampy wood-track green- 
ly goes 

Against cross-currents of sharp white or 
rose; 

Knee-deep the hillsides are; the orchards 
fling 

Shadow and song and foam of blossom- 
ing. 

Warmth of the tall sun; petals that un- 
close ! — 

Almost it seems that lightfoot Nature 
knows, 

And weaves her love-dance in a dizzier 
ring. 

But Spring this year is alien; her fire 

Fumes into flames but has no heat to burn : 

We are as onlookers at some strange rout, 

Outlandish, under minaret and spire. 

Unreal it is; we kneel not. Shut it out! — 

Flare up, harsh frost, instead; stript fields, 
return ! 



62 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



LIII 

Great winds are out : havoc is in the trees. 
So be it. Snuff the stars; unslip the rain; 
Let ruin run like blood. In vain, in vain! 
Comes courage in its cockle-boat, and keys 
Its pigmy voice above catastrophes, — 
Singing immortally its old disdain 
Of sudden death, enrapturing again 
Doom's ramparts with a choir of Victories. 
How beautiful that music is! How warm 
It strikes the heart! It is like reaching 

hands 
That grope beyond the stars, with faith to 

find. 
Happiness? Nay, I know not. As the 

storm, 
The singing gathers. Pain? He under- 
stands 
Who drinks of it. There is a dream be- 
hind! 



63 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



LIV 

I had a dream, once — was it lives ago? 
Beauty, the followed after, the first glint 

that went 
From charmed horizons of blue seas, was 

pent 
At last, a butterfly, and gazed on; so, 
Proven but Love, the abashed yet leaning 

low 
From sky-tops in grave woods, or deeply 

blent, 
In apple-blooms, with that old merriment, 
Sipped like a fragrance, dead worlds used 

to know. 
All is not loss : there is a dream behind, 
Made pitiful by loving. Death and pain 
Deter not, but are climbed upon; the hour 
Breaks; the dream lives. It fades not; it 

will find! 
(I fling me prone before one startled 

flower, 
Breathless, and love's pursuit goes on 

again.) 



64 



The Pursuit of Happiness 



LV 

A factory in the fields,- whose windows 

flare 
Unearthly, once a sundown; a drab door 
A blue-eyed barefoot sits and laughs be- 
fore; 
A whistle down the railroad, going 

where ? — 
So dreams begin. It is not far, nor rare, 
Yet tasting of it is to drink no more 
Sleep, or soothed limbs, or drowsy man- 

dragore : 
But heartaches, and hurt fingers — these 

are there. 
The wind has need of us; the violets blow 
One hillslope yonder — still the old en- 
deavour ! 
Youth calls, and happiness is just ahead! 
Who lives to it? — the lonely wanderers 

know. 
There is a beauty, after all is said — 
And after all is sung — unreached forever. 



65 



JACK O' DREAMS * 

(To Alfred Noyes) 

On Brooklyn Bridge, at evening, coming 
home against the moon, 
From the city, where the toilers ebb and 
flow; 

In shadow that a tower cast, — 
As light as though a flower passed, 
I met him, but I knew him not, I knew him 
not — so soon. 
(I was from the city, then, and couldn't 
know.) 

Oh, nothing but a poor old man from sunny 
Italy, — 
From the land where the purple grape- 
vines grow; 

A bundle on his back he bore, 
And bent as though his pack he 
wore 



* From the Poetry Review, May, 1916. 

67 



Jack O' Dreams 

From childhood; but I knew him not, and 
passed him carelessly. 
(There was hurry in my eyes; I couldn't 
know.) 

But out beneath the moon once more was 
nothing just the same, 
There was witchcraft in the spillings of 
that moon ; 

No longer, now, half dead with 

care, 
I walked the clouds with head in air 
And feet that went, unwittingly, from tip 
to tip of flame. 
(There was witchcraft, and it caught me 
very soon.) 

The cables of the Bridge were strings, 
upon a violin — 
There were four of them and every one 
in tune; 

A wind that drew a cloud along 
Made music that was loud and 
strong; 
It only needed dancers for the revels to 
begin. 
(There was music — oh, such music! — 
and a moon.) 

68 



Jack O' Dreams 

Then — down the walk and up the walk 
and winding out and in, 
On a tarantelle and carmagnole they 
came; 

With skip and leap and laugh and 

shout, 
A giddy, dizzy raff and rout, 
They rode upon the heart-beats of that 
roaring violin. 
(There was thunder in the heart of it — 
and flame.) 

Grave citizens, immaculate, and toughs 
from out of town, 
And a dozen different specimens of 
girl; — 

Gay debutantes went hand in hand 

With factory girls from candy land, 

And subway guards cut capers round a 

Wall Street magnate's frown. 

(There were mighty strange companions 

in that whirl.) 

And, oh, the shine of happiness that lit 
them as they danced! 
It was more than moonlight over them 
— that shine ; 

6 9 



Jack O' Dreams 

They gave it broadcast, each and 

all, 
From one small newsboy's 
screech and call: 
"Hey, mister!" — to a traffic-squad-police- 
man's horse, that pranced. 
(There was every sort of culture in that 
line.) 

To left, to right — they circled me, like 
Neptune's Nereid, 
In a chain without a single broken link; 
And all the lights around the rim 
Began to dip and bound and 
swim, — 
The Woolworth Tower winked at me, up- 
on my soul, it did ! 
(There was very solemn laughter in 
that wink.) 

Then, all at once, the moon was quenched 
in flying, frosty cloud, — 
Just a moment, but it snapped the dizzy 
spell ; 

The music changed to creaking 

heels, 
To tugboat toots, to shrieking 
wheels, 
70 



Jack O' Dreams 

And died beneath a trolley car that hauled 
a huddled crowd. 
(There was slaughter in the beating of 
that bell.) 

The dancers vanished, utterly, like witch- 
flame in a mire, 
Leaving weary, white-faced toilers in 
their stead. 

Once more the city flowed away 
Adown a cobbled road of grey, 
Its workshop lights behind it like a palis- 
ade of fire. 
(There was home, a spark of happiness, 
ahead.) 

Oh, nothing but a poor old man from sun- 
ny Italy, — 
From the land where the purple grape- 
vines grow. . . . 

It may be — but his pack, it 

seems, 
Held somewhat more, and Jack 
o' Dreams 
Is what I call him. Were they dreams, or 
were they prophecy? 
(There were strange things in that 
pack, is all I know.) 
7i 



UNDERGROUND * 

Life prods us here so fast, so herded we, 
Men become moles and travel under- 
ground. 
It isn't pleasant: not just gay and free, 
But now and then, for all its obloquy, 
Sight comes to deeper depths down there, 
I've found. 

Take this, for instance; not so long ago: 
A little after flood, the tide stilf ran 
Full current of that human undertow, 
I wedged in with the rest, and to and fro, 
Took turns in breathing from a painted 
fan. 

Scant room enough — a picture-puzzle space 
I fitted in precisely; on one side 
A sulky Falstaff, grunting his disgrace, 
On the other, a shop-girl with hat-hidden 

face, 
Reading a paper opened very wide. 

* From the Poetry Review, November, 1916. 
72 



Underground 

Her hand, stretched out across my down- 
ward gaze, 
Unconsciously, to read, was mine for clue 
Of all her cloudy years and priceless days. 
She read the paper, I, the hidden ways 
Of nature, groping, blindly, to come 
through. 



A not too comely hand, red, rough and 

soiled; 
Nails not just clean, nor shapely; knuckles 

those 
Of one who takes hard knocks ; a hand that 

toiled 
From childhood, and was wept on — not a 

spoiled; 
White heroine of leisure ; not a rose. 



But kept its holiness through all, that told, 
Somehow, of what a woman's heart, deep 

down 
Makes mention of, in maiden wisdom 

stoled ; — 
Of mother-hunger reaching out to hold 
A little child, for love to own, and crown. 

73 



Underground 

Was it the roundness, wedding thumb and 
wrist; 

The plump, full curve, completing the 
whole hand? 

Partly, I think, and something more, I 
missed — 

Too subtle to be gleaned — some moonlight- 
kissed, 

Faint, guarded goodness out of fairyland. 

Some dignity appealing for desire, 
Too rare for fleshly heart to write upon; 
Some star-tipped, icy pinnacle of fire, 
The sunrise points, and mariners ad- 
mire, — 
Some nook of heaven no sooner seen than 
gone. 

A woman's weakness in that hand com- 
bined 

With what the world were lost for wanting 
of: 

Youth hardly yielded it for years to find. 

Down in those depths lay dreaming, half 
divined, 

That glory to light seas — a woman's love. 
74 



Underground 

And all this while, I have remembered her, 
And wondered ... by her cog-wheel 

world caught in, 
Poor and unmarried, would ripe nature 

stir, 
Or being balked, succumb to character 
And wreak slow vengeance where it could 

not win. 

A riddle, this, I have no thought to read, 
Only to bring to light; just to propound 
Once, and leave off : there may be who will 

heed. 
This much I take for truth, not faith or 

creed, — 
Goodness is better down there — under- 
ground. 



75 



A YOUNG GIRL LAUGHS 

Two squares of grass, four clothes-poles 

and a tree; 
The city side-walk one brick wall away; 
A guarded hint of golden, dying day; 
And dreams? Not yet. The pansies set 

me free. 

Fragrant, clean pansies, musked of good, 

brown loam, 
With furry cheeks of butterflies, and look 
Of rustic comeliness, its hearth forsook 
On market day, a pleasant jaunt from 

home. 

Pansies with upturned faces, and far eyes 
Expectant for some pageant long de- 
layed ; — 
A pushing populace by rumour swayed 
Of forward bugles fringing eagled skies. 

Bugles of breezes making dark leaves stir 
And shadows quicken, down long thor- 
oughfares, — 

76 



A Young Girl Laughs 

With laughter laden, and cool ocean airs, 
And flapping sails the twilight tints to her. 

Pansies? Nay! — but dancers glamorous, 
In frisky whirl-around and lissome sway; 
Startle and stoop and down the wind away; 
Then back once more, the plucked strings 
clamorous. . . . 

Stale city night, descending lonelily ; 

A girl's light laugh one blind brick wall 

away. 
A blotted bed of pansies — what are they? 
Two squares of grass, four clothes-poles 

and a tree. 



77 



A YOUNG GIRL SINGS 

Weakness, perhaps. The anaesthetic fumes 
Die hard; and nausea dilutes courage 

more, 
Even, than pain — the little creeping pain 
That flickers here and there like northern 

lights 
Haunting pale polar stars. (Each new 

nerve cries.) 
It was, most likely, weakness. 

First there came 
Misgivings, ugly ones, the kind that blow 
A cold sea-fog on confidence ; then fears, 
As when an army wavers; then, slow 

wings 
Dark-clustering on trees; the carcass — 

doubt. 
Memory disgorged, but, dog-like, took 

again 
The pallet-bed on wheels; the staff in 

white ; 
The rubber cap to draw from; last, the 

fumes. 

78 



A Young Girl Sings 

Always, for sequel, furious revolt, 

That consciousness, the gallant blaze of 

things, 
The lighted loveliness containing all, — 
History, beauty, childhood, love of friends, 
The war in Europe, home, the noisy 

street, — 
Should dwindle, and they with it, all the 

world, 
For one thumb-pinch of vapour, to a spark 
Etching an aimless pattern on blank 

walls ; — 
Spent fire in chimney-soot. Was life so 

small ? 
Was death? . . . This argued it. (So 

gangrened doubt.) 

Came then an evening, full of sunset sky, 
That burned the brownstone cornices to 

gold, 
And tugged the sick-room curtains like a 

sail; 
Till life just breathed again. But listlessly, 
And leaden. Doubt still sank it. Then — 

oh, then — 
A voice, through open windows; a young 

girl's, 

79 



A Young Girl Sings 

High singing. Very soft, at first, and 

sweet, — 
Cool rill-notes before dawn and after 

rain, — 
But brimming, soon, and flooding fuller, 

soon, 
And breaking banks and overflowing, till 
It seemed, the room, the street, the city, 

aye, 
The very sunset, were caught up in song 
And thrilled it through and through like 

one great chord 
Triumphing. 

So a wave, up-wandering 
From drifted slopes beyond the ocean's 

rim, 
Filling its lap with stars, might heave the 

dawn, 
At last, with happy shoulders, on the land. 
And so might rumour come, of battle turn, 
At dusty noon adown a village street 
Deserted, dreading news: now pieced-out 

words, 
Incredible, through chinks in blinds, and 

now 
A populace at doorways, looking out, 
80 



A Young Girl Sings 

With tears and laughter for their dear 

land saved, 
On tattered flags, and cannon choked with 

grime, 
And faces — friendly faces ! — bringing 

home 
Victory. 

Strange that God should come back 
so, 

And youth, and hope, and clinging happi- 
ness; — 

Just for a voice, a girl's voice. But, you 
see, 

It wasn't just a voice. Birds sing, and 
souls. . . . 

Life isn't small. And death? There is no 
death. 



81 



CERTAINLY IN THAT MUSIC 

You loved that melody; your eyes and hair 
Leaned at its brink, your fingers dipped its 

tide; 
There is remembrance in it, sanctified, 
Of how you laughed and caught our hands : 

the player 
Haply perceives you not, but you are there, 
Forever, joyful, kneeling at its side 
With echoes of young daffodils, that died 
Just months agone and rhyme you every- 
where. 
You are a part of all wild, lovely things, 
Brooks, lights, clouds, birdsongs, April 

ecstasies, — 
All perishable youth that wears not old; 
But most of all, you are in muted strings 
Dreaming enchantment through a field of 

gold, 
Forthright, gay, eager . . . kissed and 
then gone, Louise ! 



82 



MARCH EIGHTEENTH 

The wastrel earth is down in dreams; 
A warmth is nooked beneath the hill; 
A blackbird pipes, a wind falls still ; — 
What waits it? What is lost? — or seems? 

Laughter is lost, and a gay hand; 
Feet are awaited, sudden feet 
That frolicked. Life was oh, so sweet . . . 
It is hard to understand. 

There is a twilight where the day 
Remembers earth, not glad to go, 
Yet joys on into lovelier glow 
Beyond the stars. Went she that way? 

Certainly sings her vivid tread 
Around some blinded corner, now: 
I hear it, though I know not how. 
Spring hears. She is not, is not — dead ! 



83 



TO THE VERY TENDER CRES- 
CENT MOON 

Precious in incompleteness, — 

Of such surpassing sweetness 

As dreams are drawn upon! 

A baby's sigh; 

A white moth's thigh; 

The lift of lids that flutter 

On love too faint to utter; 

Slim maiden, soon 

Made wife, slim moon, 

In your exceeding fleetness 

All youth is summed and gone. 



84 



THE SOCIABILITY OF THE 
SUBCONSCIOUS 

Thought gives it rarely. It must happen 

so. 
The perfect hour blooms up unheralded. 
Perpend. "Let's take our books with us, 

and go 
Out to the cabin for a quiet read !" she said. 
In lazy mood 

I took my tome and followed after. 
(The back way for adventure.) Soon 
Across the warm, gold afternoon, 
She led me, with light feet and laughter, 
Into a wood. 

A sabbath journey only, through the pines. 
One cleft of sunlight caught it; good bark 

brown, 
With easy roof and unassuming lines; 
Door open ; a play cabin. We sat down. 

There was, I think, some virtue in the 

clothes we wore: 
She, a stout skirt and simple sailor blouse, 
No hat, and sneakers; I, 

85 



The Sociability of the Subconscious 

Old flannels, outlawed many years before, 
A tennis shirt and shoes. (Comfort al- 
lows 
The mood care's quirks deny.) 
We squandered little time on speech: 
Each took a corner of the window; guided 
Plump pillows to best use, and then sub- 
sided 
Into a swoon of silence, each. 

Books held the foreground. Books were 

of that hour 
Pre-eminent, we thought. 
(In winter's footprints April hides her 

flower.) 
We read; while fortune wrought, 
Not romance, but a rarer thing, diviner. 
I read John Milton; she, an Olive 

Schreiner. 
Books held the foreground. Half-sensed, 

all the while, 
Were soft intrusions, seas, 
Far-heard when winds touch trees; 
Sweet, distant laughter dwindled to a 

smile ; 
The Peter Piper of a motor-boat, 
Throbbing beneath bright voices, then 
86 



The Sociability of the Subconscious 

A pool of silence, stirred again 

By seagulls in falsetto, a harsh note. 

But mostly — peace. One almost felt the 
sun 

A-westering, while one small bee 

Droned all the world indulgence, in his run 

Round one small room : so still were we. 

And all the while, I was aware of her; 

Reading anew 

L' Allegro, Penseroso, Lycidas, 

The Cyriack, and the Blindness. Ghost- 
lier 

As, eyes drawn down, I watched the old 
friends pass, 

That still room grew. 

I was aware of her in a new way. 
Milton absorbed me. I remember well 
The joy of winging that proud upper air, 
And, once, how scrannel keyed the seagulls. 

(They 
Still own it.) Whence it came I cannot 

tell, 
But we waked, somehow, and — I was 

aware. 

An inroad ended it: 
A megaphone 

87 



The Sociability of the Subconscious 

Called: "We are starting!" Books closed, 

out we ran, 
The world of common-sense resumed. No 

plan. 
Neither intended it. 
The hour unknown. 
But something wrought with us. I was 

aware. . . . 
We waked in some eternity, it seems, 
Brains are but barriers of, with their poor 

dreams. 
Who runs may read ; only — such hours are 

rare. 



88 



A FIRE OF LEAVES 

The hills heaped up, the road dipped 

down ; 
Red Autumn, rallying in the trees, 
Still broke the sunset's boundaries, 
While in deep shadow dimmed the town. 

A struggling hamlet, hiding there 
Between the exuberant hills, it lay 
Along our homeward-wending way, 
Humble, appealing, like a prayer. 

With grey, worn roof, and moss-grown 

eaves, 
One house there was that most beguiled; 
A candle from its window smiled, 
Before it burned a lire of leaves. 

A cottager of by-gone days 
Stood, ruddy-faced, and watched us pass ; 
Two children raked the leaf-strewn grass 
And emptied armfuls on the blaze. 
89 



A Fire of Leaves 

The fragrant smoke went sailing far 
Beyond the mouldering apple trees; 
We traced it, till a whiff of breeze 
Caught it, and pierced it with a star. 

What was there in that poor abode, 
That window and that wayside fire, 
That we, so fain of Heart's Desire, 
Should find it there, beside the road? 

Some touch of old, long-buried things ; 
Some taste of simple, early lore : 
We stood as others stood before, 
And fledged our souls with earth-brown 
wings. 



90 



ONCE 

All in and out the leaves the rain, 
All in and out the fields the train ; 
At length the city, and the sun 
Hands raised in benediction. 



A hill with lamps against the sky, 
The pavements of it not yet dry ; 
Two rows of trees that wept, like rain, 
Dark patterns in the sunset stain. 



A wink, a glimpse, and then the train 
Put beauty at its back again ; 
But ever since that moment I 
Have loved that hill-top in the sky. 



I know full well its trees still hold 
Their patterns in the sunset gold ; 
Its lamps against the crimson stain, 
I know, like wistful stars remain,: 

91 



Once 

And I am very fond and fain 
To meet that little hill again; — 
And we shall meet, I know, once more ; 
As somewhere . . . somewhere . . . long 
before. 



92 



IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED SO 

I sent you my dreams — wrote them down 
In my room, after dark, when had died 
The wind in the oak leaves outside, 
And the clocks striking in the town. 

I sent you my dreams, as they came, 
Full of wings, from the dark overhead; 
In their starlight of beauty and dread; 
In their pallor, unearthly, of flame. 

And you sent me back — not a word; 
No folded white wings to unclose: 
The heart of a pressed wild rose 
Was the single sign you had heard. 

It was strange you should take that rose 
To tell me you knew, and heard; 
It was more than a winged word; 
It was my own youth that you chose. 

It was my own youth that I held 
In the deep of my hollowed hand; 
It was breath from a far-away land, 
That I caught to my lips, and smelled. 

93 



It Might Have Happened So 

It was candles and cake, on a June, 
Long ago, and a mother's smile; 
It was wind from the sea, the while 
The harbor made mist of the moon. 

It was dream bubbles bright, that broke 
On the beach, where the ripples cried; 
It was boyhood that whistled to hide 
The heart of a man, that awoke. 

This, all this, in the rose you sent; 
But it wasn't to touch my lips to this 
That I caught up your rose — not this to 

kiss — 
But, as coming from you, what it meant ! 



94 



MOODS 

Gold, over the hilltop thrown, gold, like 
a flaming sea; 

Silver, a silvery sickle, a moon a-glinting 
frostily : 

Breath in the air, to clouds, to skies, 

To winds that cease to blow; 

Branches, bare branches, with twigs put- 
ting hands over eyes, 

Heaven let loose with high singing — let 
loose in the West, where it dies; — 

Silence below. 

I, with my window flung wide to the top of 

the frame, 
Motionless, pierced, lifted up in worship, 

just breathe your name, 
Love ; and let beauty hold to you, — 
A maiden moon that are : 
I, with raised head to dark branches, with 

moonlight stabbed through, 
Thirst, in my soul thirst, and fainting to 

drink of your heavenly dew, 
Sip of a star. 

95 



Moods 

Candlelight, candles and quiet, a kettle 

purring low; 
Silver, a silvery kettle, a-gleam against a 

cloth of snow : 
Fragrance in air, sweet clouds that bring 
Good kitchen comforts near; 
Appetite keen, but contented with present 

promising; 
House warmth and heart warmth a-plenty, 

provision to spare; not a thing 
Irksome to fear. 

I, all alone at the table, having drawn my 
chair in, 

Breaking bread at my ease, with my napkin 
tucked comfortably under my chin, 

Ruminate so, on pleasant strains 

The quiet weaves for me. 

I with bent head to my teacup, touch golden 
refrains, — 

Memories, soft, of your voice ; and dream- 
ing down long sunset lanes, 

Sip of my tea. 



9 6 



ON THE DEATH OF AN 
OBSCURE MUSICIAN 

Never more, now, at the rouse of tides re- 
turning 
Up blind creeks from the sea; 
Never, ah, never, now, when the dawn 
breaks, burning, 
Will thy wings be set free. 



Sorrowfully quenched, like a sail on the 
dim horizon 
In a gust of dark rain; 
Lo, thou art gone, and the sun-gold that 
crowned thee, dies on 
Thy proud ocean again. 



Wintrily, soon will the wind scourge the 
dry sedges, 
And a pitiless moon 
Bare the salt marshes' bleak, impoverished 
edges, 
And the ice thicken soon. 

97 



On the Death of an Obscure Musician 

Brief is the arch of our years, a rainbow 
given 
By a rift of warm sky; 
Dreamed, we dissolve like a cloud in the 
blue of heaven: 
So we come, so we die. 

So — there is naught of thee; here where 
the ocean 
Is awake round thy heart. 
Silence is here ; and the tide, with its dog- 
like devotion. . . . 
Is there song where thou art? 

Song where thou art? In the West, now, 
the clouds are withholden, 
And the rain is put by: 
Over the mountains grim is a mantle gold- 
en; 
All hot flame is the sky. 

Just as thy head drooped a glory — cloud- 
drift broken 
By strong sun — touched the sea ; 
Wonderfully pointing the way, the sailor's 
token. 
It was thine, and for thee ! 
98 



On the Death of an Obscure Musician 

Inland, but inland is peace, and a wildflow- 
er fragrance 
New distilled by the rain; 
Inland are joy and rest, and seaward — a 
vagrance 
Of long-wandering pain. 

Thou hast gone out on the sea to perilous 
places; — 
Uncompanioned must fly 
Westward with winds and white stars, on 
the sunset's traces, 
Into empty, blown sky. 

So it was ever with singers; dead of sor- 
row 
Just a heart's throb too strong. 
Thou hast gone out on the sea: to the 
world's to-morrow, 
Wave on wave, comes thy song. 



99 



THE GARDEN OF OPPORTUNITY 

(After Maxfield Parrish) 

Oh, tarry you here, while friends' feet 
go, — 

One little whisper while; 
Nay, but an hour of dalliance, 
With me my voice and you your glance ! — 
It isn't likely flowers there blow 

Would fade while you could smile. 

Full many pleasant folk there be 

Who hurry here and there ; 
Much pother is of wealth and fame : 
None is the richer, none has name 
So sweet as one another's we 

Breathe on this quiet air. 

Here's fancy; at our back's a lake, 
( Don't turn around ! ) all blue ; 
Behind it, mountains, graven grim, 
Thrust like the roots of heaven. Here's 
whim: 

ioo 



The Garden of Opportunity 

Let's choose we dream, and dreaming, 
wake 
To find the dream come true. 



We'll dream that Time has no barbed 
power 
On lovers' long delight, 
But is of heart-beats only, slips 
Only by way of pause, from lips ; 
That gift of eyes o'erleaps the hour, 
And souls pass death to plight. 

We'll dream that Beauty dreads no more 

Our unfamiliar hand; 
That tamed — fay bird — she gentles, now, 
The moonlight on her starry bough 
With music, strangering ashore 

The flutes of fairyland. 

We'll dream the flower whose bud is 
furled, 

The tight-lipped, the yet blind, 
(That wildflower, seeded in wild sod, 
It grows, it grows, it grows to God!) 
Has overrun this flinted world 

With warmth of being kind. 

IOI 



The Garden of Opportunity 

We'll dream the glory burns again 

Of visible great wings 
Above the Siege called Perilous ; 
That Christ once more is God-with-us, 
Known, and this ice of doubt and pain 

Melts into bubbling springs. 

We'll dream beside that lake of blue, 
Beneath those Alps of stone, 

That life is more than goods or gold; 

That troth is trustful, love will hold; 

That joyance sparkles derring-do, 
And faith is a bugle blown. 

It needs not long; do I fret youth, 
Sweet, with my dreamer's plea? 

One droop of fingers, lift of eyes, 

Releases you. Nay ! — but time flies ? 

The blue lake's name is Love of Truth, 
The mountains', Loyalty. 



102 



FEBRUARY 

I know the very place, if you please : 

A hill, with a long incline, 
Is given to mount, through murmuring 

trees, 
Where, whether of winds or whether of 

seas, 
Are voices that wander, and symphonies, 
Down soft-footed paths of pine. 



The hill-top gained, there is level ground 

To cross, and a garden gate 
With a latch to lift, and a wall around, 
And flower-buds bending by mete and 

bound 
And prim little walks, and beyond — a 
sound 
Of shallowing waves; but wait — 



Be patient; not yet — a few steps more: 

Now turn to the right with me ; 
A knoll to climb to a gnarled, low door 
103 



February 

In the wood, with a rough stone bench be- 
fore ; — 
Now look ! — the sudden cliffs, and the floor 
Of the far-outspreading sea! 

Bright islands, broad patches of hurrying 
shade 

And reaches of level shine ; 
Blue of the peacock and gold of the blade ; 
Pride of the warrior, sweet of the maid, 
Mingled forever: the sea does not fade; 

Only your day-dreams, and mine. 

This window that gives on rows and rows 
Of others, this dreary view 

At drab back-yards and ancient snows; 

This grind which the eternal street-car 
goes ; — 

We have it too much ; but I suppose — 
What matter, when you are you ! 



104 



OCTOBER 

Not with dreams to you, 
Dearest, I come : old ways relinquishing, 
Basket on arm no longer now I strew 
The merry buds of simple-minded spring; 
But up the forest aisles, with long haloo, 

Red-wreathed garlands bring. 

Now no more to roam, 
Idly, the fields of dalliance, I turn 
Unto bold cliffs capped cloudily with foam, 
Or hills of spruce where sudden maples 

burn; 
Then, all in sunset bathed, the lights of 
home 
Down through trees discern. 

Frosted in the sun, — 
Faded and frosted now the meadows are; 
Misty with morning all the hillsides run 
To silent distances — to pale peaks, far 
Across rich plains, with goldenrod all 
spun, — 
Blue with the aster star. 
105 



October 

Good it were to go, 
Hercules-like, with club and lion-skin, 
Stoutly, on such a morn, to overthrow 
Antagonists supernal, so to win, 
From sea to sea, a swath through all 
earth's woe, 

Letting laughter in. 

Still — this daylight dies 
Early, and, dearest, sweeter now it seems, 
Gayer and sweeter, when the north wind 

cries, 
With solid, city walls and lamplight 

gleams. 
The task once more ! — no backward looks 
or sighs! 
Life I sing, not dreams ! 



106 



GRACE COURT, BROOKLYN 
HEIGHTS 

Turned eight o'clock; the street lights 

throw, 
Exactly as in long ago, 
Deep garden glooms, and traceries 
From out of overhanging trees. 
Two stars — the Twins — against a sky 
Of April violets, fading, lie 
Just as they used to do ; the bay 
Utters old voices, far away, 
And in the church across the stones 
An organ grumbles undertones 
To little piping trebles, where 
A choir recites for Sunday prayer. 
The play, the scene are both the same ; 
The plot — too far advanced — I blame 
For something sad in all around, 
Deeper than outward change would 

sound. 

The brook of boyhood runs away, 
An eager freshet, in a day. 
Oh, spring and night! — to feel again 
107 



Grace Court, Brooklyn Heights 

That after-supper high disdain; — 
That rush of wings, while daylight dies, 
For one more romp ; that paradise 
Of being hatless, bouncing ball, 
With sweet spring twilight over all, 
And one late hurdy-gurdy, bent 
On bubbling out its merriment. 
Oh, bliss ! — to have once more at hand 
A predatory German band, 
With bleating bass and martial blare, 
And no horizon anywhere 
But happiness of little boys 
Imbibing deep of big brass noise. 
A few days older, not much more, 
And proud romance is at the door, 
With flying hair, and floating laughter 
For home-from-school to follow after. 



How prone fond memory is to praise 
That happiest of holidays, 
When boys and girls would blithe embark, 
On bicycles, for Prospect Park. 
How fresh returns that early green 
Of shaven lawns; that feathered sheen 
Of shrubs and shoots ; how good the sun, 
And youth, how lightly worn — and won! 
108 



Grace Court, Brooklyn Heights 

I never hear the slimmest rhymes 

That marched to music in those times, 

Without a stab of sudden pain, 

To shut my eyes and be again, 

Almost, and yet just not be, young 

As when those songs were being sung. 

I never hear The Geisha played, 

Or Sousa or The Serenade, 

But, radiant, out of memory burst 

The joyful times I heard them first. 

What heart-beats in those airs remain; — 

Absurd old measures tripped in twain ! 

How golden, in the vagrant West, 

Like billowing clouds, those first and best 

And sweetest dances gleam and glow 

Above the hills of long ago ! 

How bright with sails, their sea all smiles, 

They voyage for the happy isles ! 

Those times ! — when each ingredient soul 

Was stirred, as in a spirituous bowl, 

Into one glorious flame, that ended 

Only because the sun ascended; 

And long, long after, blessed, like prayer, 

The bloom of hearts upbreathing there. 

Those times! — who once did dance them 

through 
Will not forget. ( Will you ? Will you ? ) 
109 



Grace Court, Brooklyn Heights 

To-night the lilac bushes are 

An incense to the evening star; 

And little wafts of fragrance rise 

To where the tree-tops brush the skies. 

A soft wind down the twilight stair 

Tip-toes, and stirs the willow's hair: 

The poplar leaves, like ghosts in grey, 

Flutter frail things no tongue could say; 

And over all the gardens gleams 

The pallor of departed dreams. 



no 






ROMANTICISM 

(To John Masefield) 

Cold gold eagle of the Roman legionaries, 

Seated on a standard while the war roared 
round ; 

With a look of antique, travel-worn survi- 
val, — 

Up above the battle and the tramped red 
ground. 

Cold gold eagle, in the city, on a flag-pole, 

Perched upon a weather-vane and turned 
to and fro; 

With an air of stiff-necked, studied-out 
aloofness, — 

Bearing no allegiance to the life down be- 
low. 

Cold gold eagle on a twenty-dollar gold- 
piece, 

Spreading out its feathers, full of puffed- 
up pride; 

in 



Romanticism 

With a grin of lofty, gratified content- 
ment, — 

Devil take the hindmost — and a sleeked 
inside. 

Hot live eagle on a foray from his eyry, 

Swooping down a precipice on wings tight- 
drawn ; 

With a glare of eager, vivid, fierce defi- 
ance, — 

Skirling out his hunger to the brisk bright 
dawn. 



112 



REQUIESCAT * 

(April 23rd, 19 16) 

"That marble bust marks Shakespeare's 

bones; 
A perfect likeness" — Cook's guide drones. 
"He wrote those words: they're poetry. 
That's all. There's nothing else to see." 
Twittering birds in the trees outside; 
Peace in the church : gone crowd and 

guide : 
Peace in the church : the afternoon 
Wanes long; the creaking verger soon 
Comes with his keys. One night the more 
Will close above this chancel floor, 
And largest chink let in no gleams. 
What meant he by his Hamlet's 

"dreams"?— 
His Lear and old man's madness? Came 
Horror, at last, to tinge the flame 
Prometheus plucked from heaven; and 

he?— 



* Boston Evening Transcript, April 22, 1916. 
113 



Requiescat 

Looked he too deep ? Such things can be. 
Our gain is purchased so. 'Twere best, 
Just as he asked, to let him rest. 
Centuries under, ceiled with stones, — - 
That marble bust marks Shakespeare's 

bones? 
The very mention, lark-like goes 
Sky-clambering in clearest rose, 
And thicket copses, one by one, 
Wake, answering, and bugles run 
From green, enchanted glade to glade ; 
Courtiers, huntsmen cavalcade; 
Battles are brewed; brave loves beat high; 
Adventure quickens, hounds give cry ; — 
Youth, youth is up ; the world is young, 
And life, rich life, is still unsung. 
Shakespeare! — warm sunlight breaks in 

twain 
Death ; and the violets bloom again. 



114 



THESE UNITED STATES * 

(To Alan Seeger) 



New, for the most part; very, very new. 

Flimsy houses, mostly turned askew; 

Streets that straggle, where, not long ago, 

Timber stood, then cows grazed, now pa- 
pers blow. 

Much too busy to be tidy, bent 

On being bigger — one big circus tent. 

Somewhat slangy; not devoid of cheek; 

Loving noise, and loving best to speak. 

Swayed by headlines; governed by a 
shout ; — 

Nine days of wonder, then a new one's out. 

Bashful in nothing; reverent in few; 

New, for the most part ; very, very new. 

But — beneath the newness, in behind 

All the brag and splurge and jest, we find 

This : Old memories of homespun days, 

Candle-lit; of quiet, sabbath ways 

*From Boston Evening Transcript, Feb. 7, 1917. 
115 



These United States 

Won from wildernesses, fervent prayer 
Given in peril's proof; young feet worn 

bare, 
Hands tough-trained, and level-looking 

eyes 
Keen on gunsights, calm as evening skies; 
Memories of battle, richly drowned 
In warm life-blood, heroes-wrapped- 

around, — 
Deep, too deep for tears, not spoken of 
Save by that great love which answers 

love; 
Memories of old songs, carried far 
Over wide prairies, past peaks that are 
Torches to the sunrise, past the spires, 
Star-outlined, of trees ; by rain-ringed fires 
Gleaned, and sung again on wind-bleached 

foam 
With brave ships for China, praising 

home, 
Proudly, to strange skies; most sweet, 

most fair 
Songs, the old, old same songs, every- 
where. 
Memories and going deeper — dreams. 
Dreams brought over seas, the first faint 

gleams ; 

116 



These United States 

Cherished, through storm cherished; dim 

and pale 
But not dying dreams ; still held, still hale, 
Still with haughty stars defended, still, 
Aloof, like eagles, brooding their bright 

will. 

II 

New, for the most part; very, very new. 
Anglo-Saxon, German, Celt and Jew, 
Latin, Armenian, Negro, Slav, Chinese, 
Scandinavian, Hindoo, Dutch — all these. 
Foreign tongues, not light to extirpate ; 
Feuds, hard-dying, Old-World, out of date. 
Huddled herds in cities; labour, lined, 
Often, with backward looks; love, left be- 
hind. 
Seed wild-sown the wind has foisted far; 
Rude wave-welter of all creeds that are. 
Gallant the ship; a motley crowd the 

crew ; — 
New for the most part, very, very new. 
But — beneath the newness, in behind 
All the warp and tug and strain, we find 
This: Old hungerings of long-dead days 
Spirit-bowed; of cruel, down-trod ways 
Sore with subjugation ; backs that meant 
117 



These United States 

Overseers' whip-lashes, the bent, 
Yoked abasement of once noble wills 
Lunging at thongs between their masters' 

thills, — 
Beasts of burden being; hungerings 
Germinate in darkness, gouged by kings, 
Bruised by heels of armies, overborne, 
Time on time, by conquest, despot-torn; 
Living, yet, miraculous alive; 
Daunted not, continuing to thrive 
Towards the sunlight; hungerings to be 
Shackles through, and sea-glad, and got 

free ; — 
Hungerings for open spaces, wide 
Of horizon, reaching out; to stride 
Fields not fenced a summer's day, and be 
Happy at moonrise ; to get free . . . free. 
Hungerings, and going deeper — fires. 
Fires brought over seas, immense desires, 
Smouldering, subterranean; smothered, 

dim 
But not dying fires; still lodged, still grim, 
Still with stubborn griefs defended, still 
Anchored like iron rock-deep in proud will. 



118 



These United States 



III 



Dreams. Fires. Fraught clouds from Eu- 
rope blow, 
Whose rampired walls full sulphurously 

glow 
With battle-flare at sunrise; overseas 
Breaks the beached foam of wasting pano- 
plies, 
And faintly, as in sea-shells, far away, 
The cannon thunder whispers night and 

day. 
Fires. Dreams. In factory belch fulig- 
inous, 
In caisson gloom and skyey balanced truss ; 
By cobweb rails to fabled Ophirs spun ; 
On lapping tides ; down darkened streets, is 

done — 
Gestation of a giant doomed to birth — 
The forging of a new and mightier earth. 
A mightier. And a better ? Not by ease — 
By shoulder shrugs and oiled immunities. 
Not by midnight riot. Once again 
They shall inherit most who most live 

plain. 
Ay, fear it not, the little breed that knows 
Nothing but wantonness, it goes — it goes. 
119 



These United States 

A bolder blood shall stride into the part; 
Shall take the stage ; shall wield a manlier 

art, 
And put a shame on mimic. Even now 
Is troubled in his sleep the Sleeper's brow. 
Unrest, like mist, grows ghostlier. It 

seems 
The Thinker questions. . . . Travail. 

Fire and dreams. 
Dark overhead the clouds of Europe blow, 
Heat-lightning-lit, dull, ominous and low. 
Not yet, not yet the hour, but, tryst to keep, 
A spirit moves abroad upon the deep, 
And will be stirring soon. And will be 

sung, 
Soon, to a clarion of nobler tongue 
Than inks on ticker-tapes or glibly reads 
From pompous records of parochial greeds 
Promulgate for the People. . . . Midnight 

blue. 
Stars of these States a-shining through, 
The dawn awaited. Dreaming, peaks and 

spires ; — 
The house still locked and dreaming. 

Dreams — and fires. 



1 20 



These United States 

IV 

Thou whose full time both buds and stars 

await ; — 
On the curved cup of destiny whose hold 
Permits no bubble world its concave gold 
Too buoyant to relinquish; at whose gate 
Love takes her lantern and goes out to 

Hate, 
Bending above the battle's bleeding mould; 
Our country thou in fire and dreams en- 
fold- 
In forest freshness, her, thy consecrate. 
There must be some strange beauty hid in 

her, 
With withes uncut by sharp awakening 

sword; 
Some precious gift not veined, some truth 

of power 
Thou art maturing, great artificer. 
Fools we, and blind; impatient of an hour; 
But make her worthy, for we love her, 

Lord! 



121 



THE SOLDIER TO HIS 
COUNTRYMEN * 

A year ago to-day 
I hitched the team up and took milk to 

town. 
A grumbler I was ; people used to say 
They knew my wagon by the driver's 

frown. 
I growled at mud and swore when rain shut 
down, 
A year ago to-day. 

This very afternoon 
We did five miles of mire and then dug 

in, — 
Machine-gun practice, blanks, but the same 

tune; 
Came hiking home we did, then; one wide 

grin 
Because our captain praised us some. Our 

skin 
Has toughened; we'll sing, soon. 



* From Boston Evening Transcript, March 27, 1918. 
122 



The Soldier to His Countrymen 

I don't just understand. 
The way of it, but somehow all this drill 
And marching, all this mud and sand 
Rubs off the edges of our souls, until 
What one man wouldn't do, we rookies, 
will — 

Gladly, you understand. 

We like each other, too, 
Better and better. Isn't much untried 
About the men you tent with ; through and 

through 
We scorch each other; learning the inside, 
The thick and thin of each raw human 
hide : — 
The best comes deep in you. 

We'll need our best, they say, 
When we get over. Sometimes, we hear 

said, 
Waist-deep it is in water, hell to pay 
On top of you, and neither food nor bed 
For days. And sometimes men drop dead 

Without one sound, they say. 

At school we used to know 
Wars and the dates of battles; Paul Re- 
vere 
And Bunker Hill and Gettysburg — a row 
123 



The Soldier to His Countrymen 

Of them, we studied. Things in books are 

queer: 
When Lee fought Grant, it wasn't real or 
near. 
This one is different, though. 

This one is going now. 
Why, on our hike to-day we passed a farm, 
Chickens, a pig-pen, horses, an old cow. 
All acting just as usual. No harm. 
Only they ought to show some faint 
alarm, — 

I felt they ought somehow. 

About this time at home 
Will be some crocuses, or buds, maybe, 
Of maples, and the smell of good black 

loam 
In ploughing time. And sunsets? I can 

see 
The clouds now, back of our old apple tree, 
About this time, at home. 

Supper was early then, 
And afterwards we boys went out to play 
Till dark. We never dreamed as grown- 
up men 

124 



The Soldier to His Countrymen 

We should be here some springtime, far 

away, 
Swabbing a rifle out at end of day. 
We were too careless then. 

I liked October best ; 
White frost on fields; thick yellow stacks 

of grain, 
And early nights for mischief. Old Green 

guessed 
Who stole his pumpkins, when we ran the 

lane 
With jack-o'-lanterns for his window-pane. 
At least — he hid the rest. 

Trench-raiding is like that; — 
With bombs for pumpkins. Over there in 

France 
They say the trees are all shot dead. So 

flat 
It is, they say, you see one broad expanse 
Of smoking ruins. Like home? Not a 
chance 
It will be. Not like that — 

Look! all around you, wide, 
The sweetest country; scattered every- 
where 
As far as you can see, real homes. Inside 
125 



The Soldier to His Countrymen 

Are supper tables. Children undress there 
And go to bed in safety. No red glare ; 
Cool, quiet, far and wide. 



I like to close my eyes 
And think of it : a continent unrolled — 
All sorts of cities ; endless railroad ties, 
Bridges and mountain tunnels. Sunlight 

gold, 
At last, upon the sea. Loyal? The hold 

Of the same love replies. 

It swells the heart of you ; 
'Way out in California are men 
Escorting that same flag; in Texas, too, 
All getting ready. Watch Montana, when 
Her boys go in with it : and William Penn 

Cheering Virginia through. 

I tell you, folks, today 
This country is magnificent. You know 
How big it is, how busy; quite a way 
From Serbia, that upset Europe so, 
And yet, when once roused, granted it was 
slow — 
Just look at it today. 
126 



The Soldier to His Countrymen 

Wc needed this to learn 
How strong we were. Each one of us the 

same: 
I never dreamed to do so much. His turn 
Shakes each man's shoulders. Give us 

praise or blame. 
We chose to fight. Now watch us. One 
great flame 
The road is. Let it burn ! 

I never knew before ; 
God put this nation here for something 

high; 
Higher than we can see the top of. War, 
If we stick true, won't wreck it. It might 

die 
Of comfort. This will save it. Happy? 
I? 
I never lived before. 



127 



A PINE BOX— AND THE FLAG* 

That tree once touched the stars. The 
flame 

Went down it of the dawn ; 
Brave, whistling airs awoke it. Came 
Death to the heart of it, straight-aim . . . 

The steel could be withdrawn. 



That way is best : the naked thing 

In its own dignity. 
Sweet wood, to which wood odours cling 
Still, and what a proud covering 

For fallen man and tree. 



Proud flag! — how meekly it is prone 

On that residual breast! 
Asks not his name — nor was he known 
Widely — just loves him; that alone, 

Putting aside the rest. 



* From The Boston Evening Transcript, October 
2,6, 1918. 

128 



A Pine Box — and the Flag 

New wishes in those stars; new prayers 
Said in those precious veins : 

New trees, new dawns, new boisterous 
airs; 

But no new flag ! — 'tis theirs, 'tis theirs ! — 
Their blood in it remains. 



129 



THE HOUSING OF THE BANNERS 

(To Joyce Kilmer) 

I had a vision : Near an open sky, 

In aisles of trees, 
With windy songs and rustling tread, went 
by 
Dark panoplies. 
They might have been the music of night 

air, 
Or shadows of the stars; no bugle blare, 
No shattering shot; I looked — and they 
were there, 
Cadenced like seas. 

They moved one way, as clouds move when 
the moon 
Is being drowned; 
They drew along a singing, but the tune 

Was less than sound: 
And every marcher came as he was gone, 
So like, so many did I look upon; 
The wood was full of faces, pale and wan. 
None looked around. 
130 



The Housing of the Banners 

Dry leaves and I went with them, drifting 
slow 
As might a sleep 
That followed, waking, dreams it fain 
would know 
And could not keep; 
Till leagues were lost : then rugged ground 

ahead, 
And stars, and then a silence, far out- 
spread. . . . 
So on a hillside wildflower stalks are shed 
When reapers reap. 

I saw them lie, down through the stubble 
grass, 
And ruined shade ; 
Not all were whole, not all full limbed, 
alas, 
But, sad betrayed 
By ebbing starlight, up that hill lay all, 
And down that hill and far beyond recall, 
Tumbled in windrows widening; whose fall 
Was unafraid. 

Whose fingers reached toward daylight. 
Came the stir 
Of one small breeze, 
As might a smile be, pitiful, from her 
131 



The Housing of the Banners 

Whose child would please 
With songs for sorrow; then, it seemed, a 

sigh 
That candle flames might steady through 

went by, 
And brought a shudder underneath that 
sky, 
Of sore unease. 

A miracle! — like hairs upon my head, 

In cold accord 
They stood; those multitudes of stretched- 
out dead, 
Straight and restored. 
And now were ranks, and now were flags 

unfurled, 
And now went out a music on the world, 
Wherefrom broke words, like bubbles, 
darkly swirled, — 
Pricked with a sword. 

"O Warm earth air, to feel the dawn again 

Down hillsides go ; 
To hear flocked cattle wake, and the re- 
frain 
Of far cocks blow ! 
What gifts we gave who stripped us of 
these things: 

132 



The Housing of the Banners 

No more, ah, never, steeped in blossomy 

springs, 
Shall life brim over us in opening rings, 
Or pale cheeks glow? 

"Shall love be never rosied for our sakes, 

More, as of old? 
Nor sunlight fall through apple-boughs, in 
flakes 
Of fluttering gold? 
Where shall we learn the like of sudden 

feet 
Coming down garden walks, beat to heart's 

beat? 
O precious life ! — O passionate and sweet 
Tales to be told ! 

"A murmur in the hills; a waft away 

To beckoning deeds; 
So — it were best to linger not a day : 

Who hears it, heeds. 
Spirits are dipped in starlight long before 
They drink the sun, and starlight sways 

them more. 
Dreams; — or remembrance? Youth runs 
bright on war, 
And bleeds — and bleeds. 
133 



The Housing of the Banners 

"There is a troth beyond the leap of eyes; 

A pledge too far 
For traveling light to flicker across skies 

From star to star: 
O warm earth air, no more, no more for 

you 
These banners, with their good brave scars. 

They too 
Are Truth's: you shall not stir therm O 
be true, 
Earth, as they are ! 

"And in the deep years be in mind of them, 

When shadows go 
Through forests, or touch hilltops, or a 
stem 
Lifts heart aglow 
From treacherous glooms. Remember us, 

awhile, 
With gifts of open doorways, and a smile 
Or two, when a bird sings in some sweet 
aisle 
We used to know." 



I heard no more, for came a great fanfare 
Of golden sound; 
134 



The Housing of the Banners 

Awakening trumpets, mounting, stair by 
stair, 
In spiral round: 
And lo, a cloudy roof and window stain 
On ancient columns lifting their clear grain 
Through such a calm as never breathes 
again, — 
So deep its swound. 



On either side of that long nave there hung 

Trophies most dear, 
And all high deeds were there that song 
has sung, — 

Godlike to hear; 
Only a little, yet — so far, so high — 
Those walls were theirs the world will not 

let die; 
The cross upon the altar was like sky 

A lake draws near. 



The trumpets touched pride's pinnacle, and 
broke, 
In spray outspread ; 
A cloud of banners filled the air like smoke, 

And all those dead 
Shook earth as might embattled seraphim, 
135 



The Housing of the Banners 

With one great shout. The silence seemed 

to swim 
With heavenly colour, as that youth's o'er- 
brim 
Was harvested. 

I was alone, to drink the drowsy air 

Of languid day; 
The dawn remembered banners; stair by 
stair 
The birds climbed. They 
Upon the hillside . . . they were poppies, 

blown 
With sleep. It is not grief's high part to 

own 
Tears. Rather, smiles ! I plucked me, 
all alone, 
A red bouquet. 



136 



I 



